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Most British Columbians now support Trans Mountain pipeline, poll shows

VANCOUVER—A new poll suggests British Columbia today is not the unified stronghold of pipeline resistance it is often portrayed to be.

Now, the Research Co. poll shows, a majority of British Columbians support Ottawa’s recent decision to reapprove the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion.

Mario Canseco, president of Research Co., explained the pendulum shift by saying “everything changed” when the federal government got involved.

“It’s a lot easier to assemble a group of people to protest a company that is based out of Houston, Texas, than it is to protest a decision that was taken by the federal government,” Canseco said.

“It’s a lot easier for the government to say, ‘We believe this is in the national interest.’”

In the online survey conducted late last month, 56 per cent of residents agreed with the federal government’s decision to reapprove the project. However, almost the same number of people, 59 per cent, expressed dissatisfaction with how the feds handled it.

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Canseco, who has been tracking the province’s attitude toward Trans Mountain since the expansion project was announced, said numbers began to shift when the feds purchased the pipeline on May 29 of last year.

Those people have moved from moderate opponents to supporters, Canseco said. Before the government got involved, he said, there was a higher level of strong disagreement.

As expected, dissatisfaction with the way Ottawa handled the issue is universal among strong opponents, at 95 per cent. However, Canseco pointed to the 50 per cent of British Columbians who moderately or strongly support the expansion and are also unhappy with the feds — suggesting that disparity highlights the time it took to approve the project.

“It’s not as if this is going to be making people who were maybe flirting with the Conservatives to go back to the Liberals because of job creation or energy policy,” Canseco said. “If anything, it shows that it’s not going to help Trudeau get some of those small ‘c’ conservative voters.”

Those voters are more likely to support the project’s approval but still believe the government should have “gotten it done a lot quicker,” he added.

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More than 70 per cent of British Columbians believe the pipeline will create hundreds of local jobs, the poll shows.

Support for Ottawa’s course of action was highest among men, people aged 55 and over and residents of the Southern Interior — roughly 65 per cent in each category — as well as people who voted for the BC Liberals in the 2017 election, at 72 per cent.

The most striking shift has come from Vancouver Island, where Canseco said opposition was highest last year, clocking in at more than 60 per cent. That time was the height of the protest movement, with several high-profile politicians getting arrested.

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That sort of resistance is no longer visible, and politicians — such as Green Party Leader Elizabeth May or now-mayor of Vancouver Kennedy Stewart — are no longer protesting themselves, Canseco noted.

A majority of Vancouver Island residents now support the project.

“It’s not something that happened magically because of time or a brilliant campaign,” he explained. “It happened because there are a lot of residents who look at the feds getting involved and say, ‘If it’s good enough for them, maybe it’s good enough for me.’”

Respondents were split on whether the pipeline threatens the health and safety of residents, with 46 per cent agreeing and 44 per cent disagreeing. Canseco said prior to the federal government taking ownership of the pipeline, more than 60 per cent of British Columbians worried about the impacts of a spill or accident.

Meanwhile, the poll shows more than 40 per cent of British Columbians still believe the province should do anything necessary to ensure the expansion does not happen.

And that comes down to political affiliation, Canseco said.

The 2017 provincial election resulted in a B.C. NDP minority government being propped up by shared seats from the B.C. Green party.

More than 70 per cent of self-identified Green voters said they want the province to do everything in its power to stop the project. But for the NDP voter, that number has dropped to 51 per cent from more than 70 per cent in 2017, when the party was in opposition.

Now, it’s what the base wants, Canseco said.

“They’re saying, ‘If you have to do this, if it’s going to create jobs, if it’s going to be helpful for the province, maybe we should stop fighting this and concentrate on other stuff,’” he explained.

“For (Premier John) Horgan, it’s an opportunity to say once all of the court cases are finalized, ‘Well, we did what we could, that’s the way it was, and the federal government is just too powerful.’”

The poll was conducted from June 22 to June 26 among 800 adults, selected from several panels to account for the province’s demographics. Its margin of error is +/- 3.5 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.

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